Sunday, November 23, 2003

You, me and every other taxpayer are drowning in a rainforest of pork. Right now, the senate is in the process of debating an energy bill that doesn’t even do what it should do – open up the Arctic National Wildlife Range to oil exploration in an attempt to help make us less dependent on foreign oil. What does it do? Provides funds to build a rainforest smack dab in the middle of Iowa – a place where the average temperature in the middle of winter is 20-some degrees. Iowa’s Republican senator, Charles Grassley, is pushing for taxpayer funding of this brainchild of an eccentric Iowa millionaire named Ted Townsend who can afford to be overtaxed and has nothing better to do than thinking up wacky projects that require taxpayer funding.

Here are some of the other projects that are included in the “energy” bill that we will eventually end up paying through the nose for (source: The Des Moines Register):

 Destiny USA, Syracuse, N.Y.: $2.2 billion entertainment and retail center near Onondaga Lake.
 Louisiana Riverwalk, Shreveport-Bossier City, La.: $180 million urban renewal project, including a marina, on a former industrial site along the Red River.
 Atlantic Station, Atlanta: $2 billion residential and commercial project on the 138-acre site of a former steel mill north of downtown Atlanta.
 BelMar, Lakewood, Colo.: $750 million mixed-use project designed to create a "downtown" for the Denver suburb. The project would include a hotel, 1,300 residential units and 1.8 million square feet of retail and office space.

What do these have to do with energy? Nothing. But they have everything to do with the kind of government pork barrel spending that will bankrupt all of us if we don’t protest loud and long. This is real money folks. And it’s coming right out of our hard-earned paychecks. We started at the top of the pork hierarchy here, but will back up now and start back at the bottom – the local level, because politicians are out of control at every level of government. Forty-four states are running budget deficits totaling $88 billion, thousands of city, county and municipal governments are running budget deficits totaling in the hundreds of millions and the out of control spending doesn’t stop. Imagine if you had five major credit cards, all maxed, a home mortgage for 125% of your home’s value, a second mortgage and three car loans and you went out and bought a $70,000 BMW thinking you were going to pay for it with your can redemption money and the money you found in the cushions of your couch. Sound ridiculous? It’s no more ridiculous than the reckless spending policies of government entities at all levels.

We’ll use the example of my metropolitan area – Des Moines, Iowa -- a typical Midwest metropolitan area with local governments run by socialists of all political parties, but mostly Democrats.

Starting at the bottom, we have the Des Moines School District. The school board just voted to accept donations (yes, this is on top of all the tax money they rake in at every level) to close a $550,000 budget deficit. The district is right in the middle of a building boom financed by an increase of a penny in the sales tax, which they brought up for a vote three times in rapid succession before it was finally passed. (The opponents were outspent $15,000 to $250,000 the last time). It was supposed to be a panacea – the answer to the district’s prayers – all they would ever need for the next ten years. But it was barely passed before the district’s superintendent, Eric Witherspoon (who I noticed, isn’t forgoing any of his $150,000+ compensation package to help close the district budget deficit) proclaimed that it wouldn’t be enough and they’d have to find more somewhere (translation, hold on to your wallet). Meanwhile, they’re in the middle of spending every dollar they can get their hands on rebuilding school buildings that were built not much longer ago than I was born (1961) and probably could have still been perfectly serviceable if they were properly maintained in the first place. Now they are talking about laying off some janitors and secretaries and everyone is panicked. But of course the Associate Superintendent for Nasal Discharge Disposal still gets to keep his $100,000 a year position.

Moving up a rung, we have the Des Moines City Council, trying to close a $1.5 million budget deficit by turning off every other street light and other such nonsense. Meanwhile, these bozos are planning on turning our comparative burg in the whole national scheme of things into a cosmopolitan city by re-inventing the downtown for the third time in twenty years. This third incarnation of the rebirth of the downtown includes a $60 million science center, a $30 million library (that at one stage of planning called for a living grass roof) and a $40 million entertainment and housing complex and tens of millions in incentives (read bribes) to keep big business from moving out of the city. Where is all of this money coming from. If you ask a city council person, they’ll give you some bullshit answer about different revenue sources and funds, but ultimately it comes from where government always gets their money – our paychecks.

Moving one more rung up the ladder, we’ve got the Polk County Board of Supervisors, a motley group of socialists who have managed to reduce their $5 million deficit down to a little over $1 million, by tactics that amount to finding change in the laundry. One of the major tactics was to fire the county manager, saving her $145,000 a year salary and a total operating budget for her office of $1.1 million, hardly chump change and a major cost saving move. Problem is, after they fired her, they couldn’t figure out what she did and couldn’t account for the time she spent on the job. Polk County government seems to not be running any worse than it did before they fired her. So what were we paying $1.1 million to operate her office for on top of the $75,000+ a year, plus office expenses for five county supervisors if she had no clearly defined job duties? Apparently none of the full-time supervisors care enough before they fired her to find out if she was actually doing anything. To top this all off, the fired county manager, who is a black female, threatened to sue for discrimination and the county ended up settling with her for a sum of more than her annual salary. You see, she had recently turned down an offer to go be the Fulton County, Georgia county manager (Atlanta metropolitan area) and the supervisors had increased her salary to stay in Iowa even though they obviously didn’t know what she was doing. Needless to say the lucrative offer in Georgia was gone by the time they fired her and she was more than a little pissed. But we’re not done with the sordid tales of fiscal irresponsibility in Polk County yet. We haven’t even scratched the surface.

Next we’ve got the Polk County Events Center fiasco. The supervisors weren’t satisfied with renovating the current auditorium – Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium – built in the early 50s and still perfectly serviceable. So serviceable in fact that they aren’t planning on tearing down or decommissioning the 16,000 seat auditorium. Just building a new one that seats a mere 3,000 people more people right next to it at a cost of $217 million (up from $206 million, up from $200 million, up from $170-some million, up from $160 million). Yes, instead of having one stadium that seats 15,000+ vacant 75% of the year, the Des Moines metro area will have two! Sit empty for 75% of the year you say, whatever do you mean. I mean that, against all logic and prevailing wisdom, Polk County is building a $217 million “events center” without a major tenant to lease it. Another part of the “events center” is a convention center sponsored by a major supermarket chain. But, again, we already have the Polk County Convention Complex built in 1985 at the height of one of those previously mentioned revitalizations of downtown Des Moines. The Polk County Supervisors recently voted to close it next year. Why? Because it’s losing money. The very next day, they were begging groups that had booked it for 2005 to re-book (at a substantially higher cost, no doubt) at the new convention center in the $217 million “events center” complex. Absurd? Of course, but it’s absurdity financed by us taxpayers – an unending supply of big dollars to waste as long as we keep putting up with it.

Finally, we have state government in Iowa. Our Democrat governor, Tom Vilsack, who flew out to California to help tax and spend Davis fight for his political life in the face of his $27 billion budget deficit, turned a billion-dollar surplus handed to him by the previous Republican governor (and brought about by, yes, a tax increase) into a deficit that is comparatively, on a per-capita basis, nearly as bad as California’s. Yet he can’t figure out why overtaxed and over-regulated business are leaving the state and new ones won’t move in. So he and the legislature created an $800 million slush fund give away to corporations that will re-locate to Iowa. Instead of changing the tax climate to make it more beneficial for businesses to operate profitably in the state, we’ll still tax them and regulate them to death, but we’ll give them millions to move to the state BEFORE we tax and regulate them to death. Makes sense if you’re a tax and spend politician but not if you’re a taxpaying businessman or citizen.

Again, all of these politicians will tell you the money for these ridiculous and wasteful schemes is coming from this fund or that fund or from this tax or from that tax or from this bond issue or that bond issue in an attempt to convince you that you’re not paying for it. But when it comes right down to it, government gets their money from one place and one place alone – out of our back pockets. And in a time when personal bankruptcies are at an all time high, households are saddled with an average of $8,400 in revolving debt and we celebrate a day in the middle of July as tax freedom day – the day the average Joe starts working for himself and not every government entity that gets a piece of his labor – we just can’t take all of this ridiculous waste anymore. It’s time for a major revolt. The current and future financial stability of millions of middle class taxpaying households depends on it.

Thursday, November 20, 2003

As I mentioned in my last post, six losers showed up in Iowa last week to be upstaged by Hillary. The Democratic faithful were lined up for hours outside the Borders Bookstore in West Des Moines, Iowa to see Her Highness. The members of the lobotomized left seem to think this woman walks on water. It's time for them to put away their joints and their bongs and their purple microdot once and for all and come back down to earth for a little dose of reality. Maybe when you're high on drugs or giddy from that rush liberals get from contemplating a life under nanny-state socialism, you lose sight of what Hillary actually is: an unqualified, self-centered, corrupt, opportunistic political hack.

Although they love her, she's the antithesis of everything the gals at NOW claim to stand for. A woman who got her MRS in college, latched firmly onto the coattails of a man who she thought was going somewhere and used his political influence to land herself a job she didn't deserve. She stood by her man through numerous sexual dalliances (and possibly even a rape) so she could emerge from her husband's failure of a presidency and her marriage of convenience and embark upon as worthless a political career as his had been ... At least for us that is. His political career was worth millions to both of them. And with their millions, (garnered in part by an $8 million book deal of the same type that she and other libs badgered Newt Gingrich into abandoning, although his was only a lousy $400,000) they were able to move away from that backwards, third-world hole-in-the-wall, Arkansas, (they’d exploited it for political gain just about as much as they could by this time) to a place that really deserved them -- the liberal Mecca of New York.

So as unqualified, opportunistic, self-centered and corrupt as she is, many Democrats are just slobbering at the prospect of Hillary for president. If she does (God help us!) become president, it would be hard for her to improve upon her record as co-president from 1993-2001. Let's review:

2. Then there's Travelgate, a scandal produced and directed by none other than the former first lady as a favor to her buds Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth Thomason.

3. Let's not forget Vince Foster's mysterious death and the evidence tampering by Hillary's chief of staff apparently at her direction. (Not to mention the deaths of 60 or so other people from Arkansas and other places who were associates of or crossed paths with the Clintons. Copy and paste this into your browser and check it out: http://members.tripod.com/~rcjustice/pres.html)

4. Then there's Filegate. You know that Hillary's bar bouncer buddy who magically became director of security for the White House wasn't smart enough to come up with the idea of digging through to top-secret files of prominent conservatives on his own.

5. Then there's Whitewater and the case of the evasive billing records. How could the most intelligent woman in the world be such a ditz when it came to remembering what she did with old billing records she apparently thought were important enough to her to tote all the way from Arkansas to Washington D.C.?

All this and I haven't even gotten started.

Yes, this little darling of the Democrats has quite a record of opportunism and corruption. She certainly belongs somewhere, but not in the White House for God's sake. Try behind bars!

Sunday, November 16, 2003

Howard Dean and five of the other Democratic presidential losers (all to the left of Nikita Kruschev) were in my fair state yesterday to be upstaged by the emcee of the event -- the person every true blue Democrat REALLY wants to run for president -- Hillary RODHAM Clinton. The event was the Jefferson/Jackson day dinner and if Jefferson and Jackson were alive today and knew what all these folks stood for, they'd be suing them for libel for using their names in vain.

No on seems to be able to stop the Dean juggernaut. Yes, it seems clear that the pacifist, we're no better than anyone else is so who are we to judge, tax you to give to your neighbor and vice versa politics are a winner in the Democratic Party. So let's analyze a couple of the positions of the man it looks like the Dems will anoint as their standard-bearer for the 2004 presidential election. What does he stand for and what kind of a mess would we be in if he actually were elected president.

National Security and the Military: (taken straight for his web site) I opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq from the beginning. While Saddam Hussein's regime was clearly evil and needed to be disarmed, it did not present an immediate threat to U.S. security that would justify going to war, particularly going to war alone. From the beginning, I felt that winning the war would not be the hard part winning the peace would be. This Administration failed to plan for the postwar period as it did for the battle, and today we are paying the price.

This is the same pacifist logic that got us into trouble 60+ years ago and could have had us all goose-stepping and reading Mien Kampf religiously before bedtime under threat of death had we not been forced into WWII by the Japanese. While Hitler was chewing up large chunks of Europe and gassing Jews, he didn't pose an immediate threat to us. Indeed, if we would have wanted to do something and sought "the cooperation and respect of friends and allies" (again, in Dean's own words) the pacifists in France would have denied their cooperation until the Nazi's were marching through their streets, which they did.

Dean goes on to say: "I will not divide the world into us versus them. Rather, I will rally the world around fundamental principles of decency, responsibility, freedom, and mutual respect. Our foreign and military policy must be about the notion of America leading the world, not America against the world. " Sounds cute, but makes me wonder if Dean was sleeping somewhere under a tree (next to his buddy Rip Van Winkle, perhaps) and woke up after 9/11 not realizing anything had happened. How can we develop "mutual respect" for terror groups and evil despots who want to wipe us and our culture off the face of the earth? Sometimes being the leader in the world as well as the country, means recognizing the nearly sacred role you have as the lone superpower and greatest and most successful experiment in democracy and understanding that you may have to make decisions, without the consent of other countries, that may not be popular, but that our very survival as a nation and as a civilization may depend on it. I want a president who understands that his number one priority is to protect the citizens of this great republic from enemies foreign and domestic, despite what other countries think. If he can't do that, nothing lese really matters. You can't go out and get the consent of other nations to act in our interests when half of them hate us and half of them are jealous of us. Dean's naivete on the issue of protecting our freedoms scares the hell out of me. We can't turn our national security into some encounter session circle-jerk with a bunch of backwards countries (such as those that run the United Nations). We're talking about the future freedom and security of my kids and their kids, for God's sake! And it’s very apparent that Howard Dean isn’t capable of handling this the most sacred of all presidential duties.

Dean on the Economy:

“The economic policies of the Bush Administration are misguided, unfair, and unsuccessful.” Mr. Dean, would this misguided economic policy include both the 7.2 percent GDP growth in the third quarter or the 256,000 jobs created in September or just one or the other?

Like the rest of the Democrats, Dean doesn’t get it on the economy either.

Dean goes on to say that Bush’s economic policies “fail to meet the basic standard of economic justice (?): decent, well-paying jobs for all who want them. They are policies that have created a legacy of debt for future generations. Huge tax cuts that benefit the wealthy are starving essential government services like education and homeland security and forcing states and local governments to increase sales, income, and property taxes. While America’s wealthiest individuals -- those in the top 2 percent of income brackets -- receive the bulk of the tax cuts, America’s middle class is left behind.”

You can’t really illustrate a more complete misunderstanding of basic economic principles than Dean demonstrates in this statement. First of all, it’s not the government’s business to create “decent well-paying jobs for all who want them”. (And, while we’re on the subject, what’s a “decent well-paying job” anyway? Five bucks an hour $50 an hour, $500 an hour or how about $1,000 bucks an hour. Now that's my definition of a "decent well-paying job"! I have yet to hear a Democrat clearly define the term.) When government creates “decent well-paying jobs” all we get is a bunch of fat bureaucrats and bloated government spending. When government gets out of the way, businesses create jobs and the economy booms. Reagan proved it in the 80s and Bush just proved it – cutting taxes helps spark economic growth and businesses hire people. As far as taxes go, it only stands to reason that the people who pay taxes are the ones who get tax cuts. The $800 rebate I got last summer was a whole lot better than a swift kick in the ass and I’m sure most of you middle class people such as myself who got similar rebates feel the same way. What did I do with mine? I went out and spent it just like millions of other middle class people did, which also stimulated the economy and created jobs. It’s pretty simple: when people have more money to spend, they spend it.

Another fallacy is that cutting taxes for the “wealthy” (I never thought of myself as wealthy, but I must be because I got a decent rebate last summer) causes deficits to rise. Again, as Reagan proved in the 80s, cutting taxes gives people more money to spend and they spend it on taxable economic activity and tax receipts rise. The reason this didn’t reduce deficits under Reagan and isn’t under Bush is because government spending is out of control. The key to erasing budget deficits is tax cuts coupled with actual spending reductions, not taxing people more. Until someone gets a handle on government spending (and if a Republican hasn’t been able to, don’t count on a Democrat to do it) deficits will continue to rise.

In a country where some date in mid-July – seven months into the year – is celebrated as the day when the average Joe taxpayer starts working for himself instead of every government entity that has their tax hooks into him, it’s hard to think that ANYONE could be under-taxed. It’s clear that Howie Dean subscribes to the Socialist notion that the money you bring home is merely what benevolent government is kind enough to let you keep. He may be a doctor, but he obviously failed Econ 101, If you trust Dean with the economy and taxes, you’re probably stupid enough to think you ARE under-taxed. More on taxes later. And more on the belle of the Democrats little Iowa ball – the female half of the Democratic Party standard-bearers, Hillary RODHAM Clinton.

Saturday, November 08, 2003

These are the words of Gary Ridgeway, a guy who' s major accomplishment in life has been to brutally murder 48 women. He has the distinction of being the most prolific serial killer in the U.S. to date. He beat Bundy. He beat Dahmer. He beat Gacy.

At least we got him, you say, and he can't do it again. Not so fast. Instead of the death penalty, this miserable shred of human debris plea bargained his sentence down to life in prison. No he won't be executed. The taxpayers of the great state of Washington will be paying for a warm bed and three square meals a day for him for the rest of his natural life, which at the age of 54, could be another three or four decades.

There are some who are happy about this outcome. The death penalty is cruel and unusual, they say. It's vengance. It's not fitting of a civilized society. What a wholesale bunch of crap.

First of all, plea bargaining with a brutal murderer is ridiculous. In this case, it appears that they had enough DNA and crime scene evidence to convict him on at least some of the murders. They didn't need to make a deal with him to get him to confess to more. Even so, how can you trust the word of a guy who is more than likely going to try to cover his ass for self-preservation? This guy spent most of the past 20+ years tricking women into believing he was a nice guy so he could take them out and strangle them. Fry him. It's what an evil bastard like this deserves.

If there are any death penalty opponents reading this right now, their pent-up seething liberal rage has probably boiled over and they're spinning into outer space. "He says 'fry him', see, it's pure vengance" their namby-pamby little minds are thinking. Well, simmer down, liberals. You've got it wrong and I'll explain it if you can deal with the truth. If you can't, you had better move on. Find some liberal blog that won't tax your world view or your critical thinking skills so much.

First of all, death penalty supporters aren't out for vengeance. This guy strangled 48 women. Jeffrey Dahmer killed numerous small-framed boys and men and cooked their parts on his stove after forcing or tricking them into having sex with him. John Wayne Gacy just had a different method of disposing of his victims after having sex with them -- he buried the bodies of 28 young men and boys in the crawl space under his house. The fact that they committed these crimes is not a matter of dispute. The only fair and just punishment for these guys is to pay with their life.

Secondly, people like this don't sit around in prison feeling terrible remorse and guilt for the rest of their lives. They're sociopaths for God's sake. They're going to do what they have to do to keep themselves alive. In this case, it was to admit to 48 brutal murders. Most sociopaths are going to sit around and try to figure out how they can get out or how they can appeal their sentence, tying up the legal system, spending our hard earned tax dollars and forcing us to pay to keep them alive. After all they've got nothing but time. Some even kill again -- in prison. In Iowa, a lifer who was convicted of killing his brother's girlfriend, cutting her head off, throwing the head out of his car on a farm road and having sex with the headless corpse before stashing it in his bathtub, killed an inmate convicted of robbery with a dinner utensil. Not that robbery is a laudible activity and I don't know the particulars of the guy's crime, but perhaps he deserved another shot at life that he doesn't get now because this twisted murderer was kept alive. You see, Iowa is one of those "progressive" states that doesn't have the death penalty.

Finally, sometimes these death row guys who have nothing better to do than sit around and think actually do figure out how to escape. You hear about it happening once of twice a year, It happened in Texas not too long ago and those guys killed several people before being caught in Colorado. Try telling the relatives and friends of their most recent victims that life in prison is okay because "they can never get out" and "they have to live with what they did for the rest of their life". As far as I'm concerned, in these types of cases, the rest of their life should consist of the time between the time the judge hands down the sentence and the time it takes to warm up the electric chair and strap them in.

Thursday, November 06, 2003

There's been a lot of one-sided discussion in the news the past couple days about the ban on partial birth abortion. Liberals have called this an attempt to eventually ban all abortions. They've called this ban an eroding of women's freedoms. Today, I've heard the procedure described as "so-called" partial birth abortion, I've heard the pro-life movement called anti-abortion. Funny, but I haven't heard a reporter describe the pro-abortion position the "so-called" women's right to choose. Well lets cut the crap and find out exactly what the woman is choosing when she chooses partial birth abortion. Here's a description of the procedure taken from the American Medical News site:

Those supporting the bill, which was also introduced in the Senate, inevitably evoke winces by graphically describing the procedure, which usually involves the extraction of an intact fetus, feet first, through the birth canal, with all but the head delivered. The physician then forces a sharp instrument into the base of the skull and uses suction to remove the brain. The procedure is usually done in the 20- to 24- week range, though some providers do them at later gestations.

This excerpt is taken from an article titled "Abortion rights leader urges end to half-truths". Here's what Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, has to say about the practice:

What abortion rights supporters failed to acknowledge, Fitzsimmons said, is that the vast majority of these abortions are performed in the 20-plus week range on healthy fetuses and healthy mothers. "The abortion rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else," he said.

He knows it, he says, because when the bill to ban it came down the pike, he called around until he found doctors who did them.

"I learned right away that this was being done for the most part in cases that did not involve those extreme circumstances," he said.

Well now that we know the truth about this procedure from a guy who apparently performs other kinds of abortions (after all he's the executive director of a group of abortion providers) and bearing in mind that all President Bush signed into law was a bill banning this heinous procedure, lets go to a Knight Ridder article from today to find out how the Democratic presidential candidates feel about the procedure:

Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom support abortion rights, issued statements denouncing the new law.

That about says all you need to know about how the Democratic presidential candidates feel about the sanctity of human life, doesn't it. Are they all just ignorant or do they really support sucking the brains out of a healthy, viable baby in order to kill it? Either way, would you want one of these fools running our country?

In addition to the overwhelming support of partial birth abortion by the Democratic presidential candidates, you've got abortion rights groups running TV ads, Kim Gandy of the NOW gang out there decrying this bill, and all of the Democrat heavy-hitters such as Ted Kennedy talking about how President Bush is rolling back the clock on a "woman's right to choose". The next time you see Howard, Dick, John, Carol, Dennis, Kim, Ted or any other liberal out there talking about "a woman's right to choose" I just want you to know exactly what the are in favor of allowing a woman to choose -- infanticide.

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Last Sunday, we were subjected to the bilge that follows from possibly one of the most worthless commentators on television today -- Andy Rooney. I mean, what is this liberal bag of wind good for anyway? Although his crap at the end of 60 minutes is usually no more than trivial BS, this particular diatribe caught my attention because it sums up all the liberal vomit that is being spewed about our effort in Iraq in one tidy little Andy Rooney turd of "wisdom". Mr. Rooney's comments were so out of line and off the mark I felt they deserved a reponse. It appears right after the text of this bloated liberal gasbag's commentary. I tried to email it to the 60 Minutes Show in the form of a satirical complaint but, strangely, their email server doesn't seem to be working right. But CBS's mail servers have probably been pretty overloaded lately, what with all the comments surrounding their fictional account of the Reagan Presidency and Dan and Andy's usual strident liberal crap. And if I'm guessing correctly about the nature of the comments, they're probably not interested in getting the problem fixed any too soon.

Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes commentary, Sunday Nov. 2:

Years ago, I was asked to write a speech for President Nixon.

I didn't do that, but I wish President Bush would ask me to write a speech for him now.

Here's what I'd write if he asked me to - which is unlikely:

My fellow Americans - (the word "fellow" includes women in political speeches):

My fellow Americans. One of the reasons we invaded Iraq was because I suggested Saddam Hussein had something to do with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. No evidence that's so, I wish I hadn't said it.

I said we were going to get Saddam Hussein. To be honest, we don't know whether we got him or not. Probably not.

I said we'd get Osama bin Laden and wipe out al Qaeda. We haven't been able to do that, either. I'm as disappointed as you are.

I probably shouldn't have said Iraq had nuclear weapons. Our guys and the U.N. have looked under every bed in Iraq and can't find one.

In one speech, I told you Saddam Hussein tried to buy the makings of nuclear bombs from Africa. That was a mistake and I wish I hadn't said that. I get bad information sometimes just like you do.

On May 1, I declared major combat was over and gave you the impression the war was over. I shouldn't have declared that. Since then, 215 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. As the person who sent them there, how terrible do you think that makes me feel?

I promised to leave no child behind when it comes to education. Then I asked for an additional $87 billion for Iraq. It has to come from somewhere. I hope the kids aren't going to have to pay for it - now in school or later when they're your age.

When I landed on the deck of the carrier, I wish they hadn't put up the sign saying MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. It isn't accomplished.

Maybe it should have been MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

I've made some mistakes and I regret it. Let me just read you excerpts from something my father wrote five years ago in his book, â€œA World Transformed.â€�

I firmly believed we should not march into Baghdad ...To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant, into a latter-day Arab hero â€¦

This is my father writing this.

...assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war.

We should all take our father's advice.

That's the speech I'd write for President Bush. No charge.

Steve Bowers' response:

I've never been asked to write a segment for Andy Rooney (he wouldn't want me to), but I'd like to.

If I were, I'd start out by saying "my name is Andy Rooney and I'm a doddering old fool who won't be on this earth for more than 15 years, tops. Why should it make any difference to me that our president is fighting a war on terror to make the world safe for the existence of freedom and life as we know it in this country?

From my selfish, old fart's perspective all the $87 billion in aid and money to prosecute the war on terror is is just another way of taking more of my sizeable fortune. Of course, I would heartily approve of this war if it was was being prosecuted by someone such as my buddy Bill Clinton for some justifiable reason like a diverting everyone's attention from the fact that I had oral sex in the Oval Office with someone who wasn't my wife. Instead, it's being prosecuted by an honest president who has a sincere desire to stop terrorism in its tracks and I just can't stomach that!)I'm too senile to realize that we actually ARE fighting for our very existence and $87 billion (or more) to preserve our great country and everything it stands for and assure that future generations don't have to live in fear of terror is well worth it.

I'm certainly old enough, but I'm again, either too senile or too stupid to remember what happened 70 years ago when the prevailing wisdom was that Adolf Hitler was just an isolated looney who couldn't possibly be of any harm to us. I'm so senile I can't remember just a few months back when President Bush outlined all the reasons we were going into Iraq of which weapons of mass destruction were but one of many.

I'm also too dumb to think that all the great catharsis we went through as a country for six months or better about whether we should take action against this despot didnâ€™t give him plenty of time to hide or move his WMDs out of the country. Of course, Iâ€™m fully aware that this thug was a known sponsor of terror groups. And that he violated 18 United Nations resolutions over twelve years and slaughtered millions of his own people using chemical weapons that I and others like me don't believe he had â€“ Iâ€™m just too blind or too stupid to care.

Yes, I'm Andy Rooney, the doddering, blind, stupid old fool. And I think the most interesting question of all is why CBS has kept me doing this ridiculous little circle jerk at the end of their popular news magazine. Because I am so obviously incapable of rational thought and should have been put out to pasture long ago. Then again, my commentary isn't the only thing about 60 Minutes that's a ridiculous circle jerk.

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

This blog is dedicated to exposing with facts the rampant idiocy of the leftist ideology and showing how the intelectual bankruptcy of the left. which at this point has seeped into nearly every pore of of our culture in some way or another, will end up destroying this great country as we know it if right minded folks who are paying attention (conservative, libertarian, even Democrat) don't expose this liberal disease for what it is. The disease of liberalism is a slow-growing cancer that feeds on ignorance, apathy and moral relativism. Examples of this abound:

Ignorance of the Constitution leads people to buy the liberal dogma (perpetrated by the liberal media) that there really is an ammendment stating that you can't say prayers at a high school graduation or shouldn't say "under God" when reciting the pledge of Alleigance when what it actually says is that "the government shall make no laws with respect to the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

Ignorance of the facts leads people to believe that Bush and Reagan's tax cuts only benefit the wealthy and that we need to give tax "cuts" to "working people" who don't even pay taxes.

Ignorance of basic economics leads people to believe that tax cuts take revenue away from the government when the opposite is the case.

Ignorance of the political process leads people to believe that courts are supposed to make law instead of interpret it which gave us the ludicrous notion the killing a fetus out of convenience is "a woman's right to choose" and outlawing the killing of a viable baby by delivering the head and sucking the brains out is robbing a woman of her "right to choose". (As if her and her partner didn't "choose" to do the deed that got her pregnant.)

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is dangerous -- particularly when it's ignorance bred of apathy for the precious rights and freedoms we take for granted in this country that are slowly being eroded away.

If I had a buck for every time a heard someone say "I don't like politics" I'd be a rich man. My answer to these people is that politics is the process of electing the people who make the decisions that all of us in this country live or die by. Politics is literally everything because if the leaders we elect make stupid decisions (like pacifying tin pan dictators who would like to see all of us dead and make it their quest in life to develop weapons to destroy us and not going after them because it may cost American lives and we haven't found a lot of evidence to support one of th dozen or so stated reasons for removing them from power) -- and we do all the time -- nothing else will matter because we'll leave our children and grandchildren with a legacy of morally and financially bankrupt country destroyed and/or run by whatever evil despot we didn't have gonads enough to go after (or worse yet, run by the Communist Party USA who grew to prominence in the Democratic party in 2004 after deciding not to run their own candidate so they could align themselves with the Democrats to take the White House away from George W. Bush. ) More later.
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